October 6, 2011

North American administrators call high rates of plagiarism 'tip of the iceberg'. Jon Marcus reports

Gary Pavela remembers being surprised by the defiant reaction of a visiting student from China who he confronted over a clear-cut incident of plagiarism.

"But in my culture, we view it as honouring someone to use their words," the student told Mr Pavela, who is the director of academic integrity at Syracuse University in the US.

He thought about that for a moment before responding.

No, Mr Pavela told the student, there really was no cultural difference in that regard.

"All we're asking is that you honour them a little bit more by giving them the credit," he said.

Such conversations are becoming increasingly commonplace for administrators in the US and Canada, as North American universities aggressively recruit international students - and find that a disproportionate number of them break the academic rules.

In one study, the University of Windsor in the Canadian province of Ontario tracked how many foreign students were being cited for academic dishonesty compared with their Canadian classmates. It found that one in 53 international students had been charged versus one in 1,122 Canadians.

Even that, said Danielle Istl, Windsor's academic integrity officer, "is only the tip of the iceberg. We don't know how much goes on behind the scenes."

Most of the international students who wound up in the disciplinary process were accused of plagiarism, she added.

"To me, that isn't that surprising because you have students whose first language isn't English and they may struggle writing papers in English."

However, other studies have found that the most common offence perpetrated by foreign students is cheating in examinations.

But many of the misdemeanours are not deliberate, said Florida Doci, a student from Albania and an officer of Windsor's International Student Society.

"Most of the international students have not had to write a paper and follow the rules of referencing (before)," she said. "They happen to cheat or make mistakes like this because they don't know they're doing it. They're used to writing down whatever they read.

"I see it more as a problem that affects international students because of where they come from, rather than something they're doing intentionally."

'Survival mechanism'

While administrators are hesitant to generalise further about what may be driving students from abroad to cheat, they acknowledge that cultural differences play a major role - although not the kind claimed by Mr Pavela's unrepentant student.

Twenty per cent of international students in the US come from China (up 30 per cent on last year alone) and 15 per cent are from India, the largest groups of foreign students in the country (the numbers are similar in Canada). Experienced administrators suggest that this has a lot to do with the rise in cheating.

In some countries - China and India included - "the climate for academic integrity is not strong", said Mr Pavela, a lawyer by training who has served as a consultant to the US State Department.

"It is not simply an issue of the deficiencies of students, but includes faculty who cut corners or who do not share any more of a commitment to academic integrity than students do," he added.

Cheating for such students, he said, "is a survival mechanism. They are part of cultures where you have to do what you have to do."

Compounding this is the pressure heaped on Chinese and Indian students by relatives and sponsors.

"Those pressures include the potential embarrassment of having to go home (having not) succeeded here," said Don McCabe, professor of management and global business at Rutgers Business School and founding president of the Center for Academic Integrity.

But Professor McCabe added that US and Canadian universities had to take their share of the blame, too.

"It's the fault of the institutions in the sense that they aggressively recruit these students and don't adequately orient them in the different traditions of academic integrity," he argued.

At Windsor, international undergraduates do receive orientation, including a separate programme for engineering and management students, and yet another focused on academic integrity and managing exams tailored to foreign graduate teaching assistants.

International students in master's programmes for management and engineering are also required to sign "academic honesty agreements".

There are plans for even more comprehensive measures to be introduced next year.

Mr Pavela said this was welcome, but cautioned that highlighting concerns about international students' honesty could cause further problems.

"The debate here includes whether there is a 'spotlighting effect' going on, that we are more likely to scrutinise people from a different culture," he said.

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SCIENTIST 10 COMMANDMENTS

ARE YOU AN HONEST SCIENTIST?

Truthfulness in science should be an iron law, not
a vague aspiration.:."Anyone who has been a scientist for more than a couple of decades will realize that there has been a progressive and pervasive decline in the honesty of
scientific communications. Yet real science simply must be an arena where truth is the rule; or else the activity simply stops being science and becomes
something else:Zombie science."

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STOP THE NUMBERS GAME

"As a senior researcher, I am saddened to see funding agencies, department heads, deans, and promotion committees encouraging younger researchers to do shallow research. As a reader of what should be serious scientific journals, I am annoyed to see the computer science literature being polluted by more and more papers of less and less scientific value. As one who has often served as an editor or referee, I am offended by discussions that imply that the journal is there to serve the authors rather than the readers. Other readers of scientific journals should be similarly outraged and demand change." >>>

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"Almost every day, the media features news on academic corruption. Plagiarism, bogus degrees, degree mills, accreditation mills, research misconduct, and administrative misbehavior are among the most frequent topics, but academic corruption usually goes unnoticed in the public mainstream; rarely does it make the front page. However, this trend is already changing and academic corruption is captivating the attention of journalists and readers, and sometimes shocking the public.">>>

BARRIER TO THRIVING PLAGIARISM

"Plagiarism is a phenomenon that existed in the past, exists today and will exist in the future. Slovakia with its population of 5.4 million is confronted with theses and dissertation plagiarism like other countries. The rapid growth in the number of higher education institutions and students, the ICT and internet penetration growth plus low copyright and intellectual property rights awareness in our country contributed to the expansion of plagiarism - an unwanted kind of „creativity“. And there was an inherent lack of systemic action, which would be a barrier for its future growth." - Július Kravjar